This is a proposal for a round-table discussion about the meaning and purposes of the academic historical profession in the United States today. Since the late nineteenth century, US universities have been under the spell of the German research university model for the study of history (as in other disciplines). According to this model, the activity of the historian is to contribute to our scientific knowledge of the past using precise methods, sources, and arguments. Teaching is not as such part of that (except to perpetuate the process, training more researchers). Topic significance, political role of research, the meaning of such knowledge, and the broader collective social need for usable, everyday historical understanding are all important problems that stand outside of that model, however. Our modern profession’s awkward secret, in fact, is that this model of history is a young upstart, the child of early progressive scientific positivism in Ranke’s seminar. There have been all sorts of alternatives to this model by historians left right and center since the time of Thucydides, with problems from its politics to its epistemology. Two generations ago the challenge was from the revolutionary left while today the fresh challenge may be from the advocates of civics education. This round table will be a forum for the discussion of present trends and problems with the research model, as well as meta-assumptions about university curriculum.